DEBUSSY HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

A SHORT FILM

A short film, released in January of 2005, celebrating the beauty of classical piano music and its timeless seductiveness, starring Arthur Brauss and Victor Alexeeff, featuring the piano of Victor Alexeeff.  

Thanks to Beth Owen, Victor Alexeeff, Regine Angela Thompson and Alex Thompson for the generous donation of their homes for the shooting of this film. Thanks also to the wonderful actor, Arthur Brauss for flying in from Germany especially to do this film. Special thanks to Regine Angela Thompson, patron of the arts, for her support and for introducing us to the genius of Victor Alexeeff. Thanks also to Alternative Marketing Solutions for their support of this film.

Produced / Directed

Jane Beaumont Hall & Petra Luna

Written

Richard A. Doyon

Director of Photography,

Rene Jung, Jurifilm Entertainment

Editor

Edgar Burcksen

Music performed by

Victor Alexeeff

Featuring

Rich man "Andrew Conroy" - Arthur Brauss

Pianist "Aleksei Popov" - Victor Alexeeff

Young girl "Kathleen McDonnell" - Janine Doyon

Wife "Victoria Conroy" - Petra Luna

Son "Chris Conroy" - Michael Sutherland

Young girl "Mary Anne Dickens" - Suzanne Doyon

Host/Servant "Bertrand Smith" - Richard A. Doyon

Aunt "Emily McDonnell" - Kathryn Hall

Young boy "Zachery Miller" - John Henry Toy

Maid "Phoebe Cooper" - MT Randall

Audience "Donald McCarthy" - Ed Hartz

Audience "Carolyn York" - Anne McGinn

Audience "Valerie Taylor" - Beth Owen

THE MISSION

A short film

Is it a typical love triangle story: George, Martha, and the Pugs? Or a political story: George and Martha and The Gang of Three (Pugs)? Or a tragedy: Oedipus Pugs? Or none of the above? Our trilogy, in the style of Jacques Tati, has the non-feminist George, easily distracted by a pretty young girl and her dog, struggling for his “rightful” place in the family only to find he ranks after the pugs in Martha’s heart. He plans his revenge and prevails. Or does he?

Produced, Written, Directed, Shot and Edited by

Petra Luna Knieper & Jane Beaumont Hall

Garage sale shoppers

Kathryn Hall - "Amanda"

Jane B. Hall - "Gwen"

Neyda Dejesus - "Dana"

Anne McGinn - "Eve"

Dogs

Olive, Stampy, Leloo, & Star

thinking studio

A multimedia software development tool

Winner of the Oracle Million Dollar Educational Challenge Grant

THINKING STUDIO is an educational multimedia development tool for teaching and reinforcing critical thinking skills among elementary and secondary school children. It is designed to be used in the classroom as a supplement to the standard classroom curriculum. It is designed to help children in the 4th through 12 grades practice critical thinking skills.  It does this by encouraging the students to think critically about their selection of multimedia -- text, movies, photos, maps, and charts -- while they create a multimedia presentation on a controversial issue. It allows students to learn by doing. They experiment with creating pursuasive arguments on controversial issues.  In doing this, they also learn the skills of creative storytelling.

THINKING STUDIO consists of two components: 

ThinkingStudio software and the ThinkingStudio Militmedia Library.

Media Resources and Video/Film Production by

Jane Beaumont Hall

...dos, tres, muchos Guevaras

A digital exhibition

2000 Leonardo New Horizons Award Finalist

... dos tres, muchos Guevaras is award winning digital exhibition of the iconic art, music, photographs, films, and poetry inspired by the life of revolutionary Che Guevara, using the DXXS museum exibition system. It is a unique exhibition of works of art containing over 1,000 pieces of media, it was displayed at UCLA's Fowler Museum of cultural History from October 5, 1997 to February 1, 1998 as part of the exhibition, "Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message." It has also been displayed in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and elsewhere in the U.S. and South America. It is scheduled for permanent display in Havana, Cuba and will be displayed in museums Europe and the Middle East.

Patron access the system using a large (4' by 5') touchscreen display. The exhibition uses DXXS (Digital Exploratory Exhibition System)* technology to navigate through the collection of media. This innovative system allows patrons to explore the exhibits virtual gallery, guided by their interests rather than by a pre-determined structure.

Patrons tell the system which art they are interested in simply by touching one of the thumbnail images on the screen. The DXXS system identifies other works of art in the database which share attributes with the selected work and presents the patron with a new screen of thumbnails. By repeating this process, the patron is exposed to a variety of art, guided by their likes and interests rather than by a structured search interface. Attributes were assigned to the art works by Fabian Wagmister, the exhibit "curator." while most works of art may be assigned scores on between one to three attributes, there are over 200 attributes in the Che database (the DXXS allows the curator to create an unlimited number of attributes). 

To look at a piece of art in detail (or listen to music, see a video or movie, or read text), the patron double-touches the thumbnail interest. In the "full screen" mode, the user can search the database using more traditional search criteria (artist, date, medium, country). The media consists of:

Visual

paintings, photographs, lithographs, prints, drawings

Film 

movies and videos

Written 

poetry, essays, short written works

Music

The Spoken Word ~ poetry, speeches, short narrations